The ThinkPad Twist Thread

There is a related, older thread for Twist owners but it's gone necro and has a model-specific title, so I thought I'd start a new topic instead. I have some pressing concerns which I'd like to share with all other users and would like your feedback regardless of the model that you have.

Mine is a S230U bought at the end of 2013, pretty bare-bones and minimal (i3, 4GB RAM) -- nowhere business-like. That I couldn't change the battery (of mediocre performance) or the RAM I only found out later (it was a gift), but I thought I could live with it. I recently noticed some things that I never bothered to think about before:

1. There is a system reserved memory of 434MB according to task manager.

- I vaguely recall there was no such thing even a year ago, and it was not this much. I do recall something like 3.90GB usable but now it's just 3.58GB. I initially thought a BIOS upgrade did this, but checking the revision history that does not seem like it. I'd like to know anyone else's report of this.

2. The ultrabook runs HOT, and I mean HOT at 60 deg C average both on idle and normal loads. Even HOTTER at 90-100 dec C while gaming (on-die gpu+cpu maxed out constantly).

What's up with this? Wasn't this supposed to be a ULV processor that runs ultra-quiet and ultra-cool because of its ultra-low-voltage operation? It was always warm and a little noisy from the beginning, but I never checked temps until now and I never stressed the gpu until now.

-- Ramblings --

I understand that it's compact, has not much breathing space, and has only one tiny fan (that doesn't register with hwmonitor) cooling the one and only processor that houses both a cpu and a gpu (so no separate heatsink). However, if this is supposed to be by-design then it is very badly designed. They should've taken thermal considerations before packaging this up into a compact offering because I'm supposed to be able to utilize the hardware.

On another (happy) note, I was surprised to see that this model played Injustice: Gods Among Us at a tolerable frame rate (I don't want to take a look at FRAPS because I'd get demotivated, but it's bearable for me). However, the temps are really worrying me. Lifting up the laptop improved the max temp while gaming bringing it down to a max of 90 (not 100 like before). Don't know if a cooling pad will help any more.

This is not used as a gaming machine, but at least I don't want to have it run at 60-70 dec C when I run Matlab or some other tasks that stress the cpu constantly. And, come on, throttling is a modern advantage -- we didn't have throttling before and everything ran at max frequency at all times. I'd like to get work done and I don't see myself purchasing anything new before 2017. The battery is already bad as it is, and this constant heat I fear will degrade it faster.

Thoughts?

P.S: All other kinks have been worked out these couple of years and I really loved using this ultrabook all this while. I had a touch problem that was hardware but it went away, leaving ghost effects on some pixels. Not sufficient to claim warranty. Other than that, touch works great, nice user experience. I plan to get an SSD to last me a year or two more before throwing savings on some other computing device (can't expect another gift).